encryption

Hide Your Hard Drive’s Secrets in Plain Sight

Encrypting data on your hard drive can be such nuisance, what with all the special apps and public/private keys, and the whole thing might as well be a pound of slag if you forget the passcode.

What if you could just hide everything in plain sight?

Turns out you can. It’s called steganography, from the Greek steganos, …

A New Use For Bacteria? Encrypt it With Data

Think your USB drive is small? Well here’s some news. A team of students at Hong Kong’s Chinese University may have discovered a way to encrypt large chunks of computer data into a strain of microscopic E. coli bacteria, with one gram capable of holding as much information as 450 individual 2TB hard drives. That’s shelves upon shelves of …

The Case of the Stolen Laptop: How to Encrypt, and Why

There’s an investigator I know, top of her profession, who once put her laptop in the trunk of a cab. By the time she reached her hotel, the laptop was gone. This happens thousands of times a year at airports, train stations, libraries and coffee shops. Sometimes the thief wants your hardware. Sometimes your data turns out to be more …